On Your Side: Mental health crisis in children
Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for kids ages 10 to 14. But mental health advocates say California doesn't have the hospital beds, or enough doctors and therapists to treat these kids in crisis.
Some families can't get care when it's potentially a matter of life and death.
Imagine having a 6-year-old threatening to take his own life and being told there is no one to treat him. Or making hundreds of phone calls to therapists and not getting a single return call. It's happening across the nation, and right here in California. And experts say if we don't fix this broken system, children will die preventable deaths.
A 6-year-old boy in crisis: His mother was desperate to get him to a doctor after he threatened to take his own life.
"Which for a 6-year-old is absolutely devastating. To hear him saying things like 'I want to die, I am going to kill myself' -- just vernacular that I didn't even know he had," said one child's mother.
En route to the doctor that morning, "Andrew," whose last name his parents asked us not to use, was not only a threat to himself, but to his mother as well, even while strapped in his car seat.
"On the 405 Freeway, he has me by the hair and I am trying to navigate off the freeway with my head back, hardly able to see the road, and he was just screaming," said Andrew's mother.
Andrew's doctor said he needed to be hospitalized, but the family was told there were no pediatric psychiatric beds available.
"You kind of feel handcuffed by the system. We are in desperate need for your help and it can't be given to us," said Andrew's father.
Andrew's parents say they were told they could either sit in the emergency room and pray a bed opened up, or they could take their son home.
"Her recommendation was that we treat our home like a psych ward. Take away all the knives, take all the blankets," said Andrew's mother.
And move their other son out of the house.
"For safety reasons," said Andrew's mother. "He just could not control his body from attacking."
After 48 hours at home, Andrew was stable. But there have been more threats of self-harm.
Suicide is now the eighth leading cause of death for kids ages 5 to 11. From 2019 to 2020, the amount of mental health-related visits in hospitals in California jumped nearly 25 percent for kids 5 to 11, and more than 30 percent in kids 12 to 17.
Experts blame the increase on isolation from the pandemic and the rise of social media.
"In California, there are not enough treatment centers for youth," said Lyn Morris, CEO of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services.
According to data obtained by KCAL News, only 16 of 58 California counties have in-patient psychiatric facilities with pediatric beds, with only 746 beds across the entire state of California, according to the California Hospital Association.
"They recommend 50 beds per 100,000 kids. In California, we have 17 per 100,000," said Lyn Morris. "People don't often think of young kids having mental health issues, 5 to 11. We have had as young as an 8-year-old calling our crisis line in suicidal distress."
More and more parents are showing up in emergency rooms desperate for help.
At Children's Hospital of Orange County, for example, we found a 50-percent increase in children with a psychiatric crisis come through its E.R. since the pandemic, seeing between 150 and 300 children per month.
"And the emergency departments are overwhelmed. Sometimes it can be up to three days sitting in an E.D. before the youth will get in a bed, if they even do," said Morris.
One mother took her 10-year-old son to a local hospital when he threatened to kill himself. After three days in the E.R., waiting for a psychiatric bed:
"They said 'Well, if you're here for a week and we can't transfer you, we have to discharge you.' And I said 'What is the probability of me getting into one of these hospitals?' And she goes 'It's not very high.'"
UCLA Medical Center in Westwood does provide in patient care for children.
"The beds are full or nearly full all the time. Our occupancy rate is like 95-plus percent," said Dr. Carl Fleisher, a child psychiatrist at UCLA.
"Even before the pandemic, it was hard to get in to see people, but if you tried hard enough and made 100 phone calls then eventually you could do it. And now everybody's so busy that they're not returning phone calls," said Dr. Fleisher. "I had to stop returning phone calls."
When Rachel Rosen's 12-year-old daughter started having as many as a dozen panic attacks a day -- so severe that she would become close to catatonic -- Rosen couldn't find a single therapist without waiting months for an opening.
"The insurance company doesn't have anyone who has availability," said Rosen. "No one I call has any availability. I can't afford really to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars because you can't just do it for a few weeks. I would run out of money by the time it would start helping."
What kinds of waitlists are we seeing with therapists?
"Six months to a year," said Dr. Bahareh Talei, founder of Hive of Hope.
Can you imagine a child having to wait that long for something like chemotherapy if they had cancer?
"No," said Dr. Talei.
Dr. Talei runs the Hive of Hope diagnostic and counseling center for kids in Agoura Hills. Her goal is to connect anyone who needs it to the help they can afford.
"I really hope parents don't lose hope. Keep trying," said Dr. Talei. "There are resources out there. Just keep calling. Don't give up. If you have to show up in person, do it, don't be dismissed. Most therapists don't want to say no."
Dr. Talei says parents can also utilize nonprofit organizations that offer mental health services if they can't afford care.
Also, they can reach out to mental health graduate programs at local universities to look for therapists who are just starting out and will likely be available and affordable.
And California just passed Assembly Bill 2317. It added a new licensing category for psychiatric residential treatment facilities for kids on Medi-Cal to incentivize this kind of care.
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Resources:
Hive of Hope, (818) 392-8282
HOH provides low-fee mental health services.
Diagnostic and Counseling Center, (818) 630-5744
DCC takes insurance.
Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services
Other resources:
Open Path Psychotherapy Collective
If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or suicidal crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
For more information about mental health care resources and support, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. ET, at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or email info@nami.org.